The One That Got Away
by TurnCaryn
Summary: The SG1 Team is on a mission here on Earth, weaving through the history of the planet and racing to find a hidden cache of knowldge that could put the whole planet in danger...
1. Field Trip

Crouched in a corner, covered in dust and breathing heavily in the musty air, a woman curses under her breath. The leader of the archeological dig, she never stays behind to see what others have done, she's always in the thick of things. Annoying her crew. Like now.

"It's not right, where the hell is everything? Even if they buried it, it should still be right here. Unless it was transported. Damn, it was right here!"

She came from a distinguished family of treasure seekers, finders and donators. She was usually right about digs. This time she was wrong, but no one could tell her that. They weren't even sure the cartouche she was looking for ever existed. There was no record of it.

She finally sat back on her haunches and stared at the wall.

No one was really concerned. Sasha was demanding and always found interesting things, so no one really minded the extra work. She was a pain in the butt, but she paid well and covered all her debts. She came from a family corporation and when a dig or find site didn't work out, everyone in country got paid, and everyone else went back to New York to work for the family. Simple.

So back to New York it was. But some people didn't keep their mouths shut. Rumors began. Sasha Arises had lost her touch; she was creating false reports of hieroglyphs to get attention; and quietly there began the whispers that Sasha believed someone had magically transported things out of Giza. That Sasha believed in aliens.

* * *

Daniel Jackson sat at his desk, surrounded by piles of open books. Thewhiteboard behind him had indecipherable glyphs and notations long since ignored. He was immersed in an email he'd gotten from a colleague. It seemed that Daniel was no longer alone in the long sneered at theory of aliens in Egypt. Shockingly enough the most recent recipient of criticism from the archeological community was one of the Arises. 

The Arises family rose to archaeological prominence about a hundred years earlier with digs in Egypt, Italy, Siberia and Russia. They were finders of sunken ships, papyrus scrolls of poetry, and even some documents long lost beneath an ancient church implicating Bishop Mare in a 17th century of conspiracy to kill the pope.

Just recently Daniel had heard of the Arises family in connection with a dig one of the younger sons wanted to do. He'd wanted to do a dig in Antarctica, which the Russian authorities, the president and Hammond all had a hand in shutting down. So here was another of the youngest generation who was popping up on the SGC radar screen.

He decided that while it might seem like coincidence, he was not going to ignore it. He printed out the email and went to find Jack.

* * *

"…yes, sir. No, sir. Ya. Okay." Jack hung up the phone with an urge to roll his eyes, but belayed that as Daniel poked his head in to the office. 

"Daniel, do you have any idea what a atef crown is?"

"Well, yes, the Atef crown was worn by Osiris, the king of the dead. It was separated into colors representing parts of Egypt. One of which was Busiris, which is our planetary version of Abydos. Why? What's up?"

"There's an archaeologist who claims that he found an atef crown in Giza. The problem is that the site was registered to a family named Arise.."

"Arises, Jack"

"… but the man claiming it isn't part of that family. Meanwhile, he wants it, our pals in the Egyptian government want it, the Arise family

"Arises, Jack"

"…wants it, and I'm told that it's made of an unknown metal that we have a large quantity of spinning as we speak."

The sounds of the Stargate opening were clear. SG-7 was back.

"You want to go out there and dig around? Take Teal'c: make it a class trip."

"You know, I was just coming down here to talk to you about the Arises family. One of the next generation just applied for and was shot down over a dig over Antarctica and another is being castigated by the community for believing aliens went to Egypt."

"Now that sounds familiar."

"And a bit too coincidental. The crown was found on their site, but not by them? That's odd. Why would they go so far and then stop? Why would they leave the site open to someone else going in? How could they not have known that the crown was there? These people are too good to miss this."

"Get out there. Take Teal'c."


	2. Sasha Arises

Isis Arises paced the long beautiful hallway in the family's newly   
constructed New York RD building. Her grandmother had conceived the plan for the building before her death, and only now was it coming to fruition.

The long hallways were opened on top with beautiful stained glass warming the marble. The whole place would have been too dark and dreary if it weren't for the sun, moon, and stars perpetually glowing in the windows above. Isis counted the stars, or as many as she could before resuming her pacing.

Isis yearned to scream and rail at Sasha, but that simply wasn't done. Sasha was the current first daughter in a direct line of descent of women named Sasha, and all of them were untouchable. In Isis' opinion, _this_ Sasha ran roughshod over the family, but it wasn't as if Sasha wasn't productive.

After her mother's early and tragically young death 15 years ago, when   
Sasha was barely 17, she'd taken control of the company as the will stated and took off running. She delegated assignments to the family in a way her mother never had. Sasha herself had led a team into Siberia - how she'd ever gotten permits and governmental sanctions to do that, Isis would never know. But there she'd found a beautiful fallen temple, based on some obscure reference in a 13th century Russian poet's journal. Since then Sasha had rarely gone wrong.

But this time, oh, this time she'd lost it.

The Arises family hadn't dug in Egypt since the late 1940s, after Great Grandmother Sasha was told she couldn't dig in Giza. The family figured they would shift their focus to the upper Nile, but Great Grandmother was furious and refused to go back. According to the   
documentation from the family boardroom, it was clear that Great Grandmother Sasha was in no mood to take crap off anyone. Egypt was off limits and that was that.

In 2004, Sasha decided to go back. In the first four months she'd found the Otacziz Crypt a fabled crypt of children whose illness triggered a massive exodus out of delta country centuries ago. Right on the mark. But then she'd become obsessed with finding some hieroglyphic that no one had ever seen and no one had ever heard of. And she was looking for a certain cartouche holding the name of certain Egyptian Pharaohs that no one had ever heard of.

The only time Isis had ever seen either was in drawings Sasha had in her study. Drawings that she'd done, that her mom had done, for all Isis knew drawings the first Sasha had done. Isis wasn't concerned that Sasha was on the hunt for a red herring. She was concerned that Sasha had been within 15 feet of what could be an Atef crown  
over 3000 years old and had ignored it.

Going back over the films that had been recorded as standard, Isis had seen the signs literally written on the wall. She was pretty sure Sasha had seen them as well, but ignored them. An Atef crown would be HUGE. But not only didn't Sasha get it, she'd left the site open to intruders.

Isis continued pacing, but brought her temper down as she heard the quick and sharp sound of Sasha's heels ringing on the marble floor.

"Sasha, I…"

"Save it, Isis, I'm not interested. I wasn't looking for an Atef crown. I wasn't on the trail of one. That doesn't excuse some scavenger from coming onto our site and I will not be blamed for not being psychic."

Sasha stopped Isis with a glance. "Stop. Pacing."

Isis looked up furiously.

"Well, while we clean up this mess you're so disinterested in, you can deal with _my_ latest nuisance. Daniel Jackson is here. He's waiting for you in the research wing. I left him with Bally. She's showing him the Bishop's scroll."

"No way Isis. I am not going to ruin my reputation by speaking to Jackson; the world thinks he's a nut job! You know he's only here to talk about aliens. I'm not doing that - that is not my purpose."

"HE is a nut job? Well, what do you imagine they're saying about you? One of the most successful archaeologists of our time just walked away from a site that was later discovered to have a cache from a King." She rolled her eyes in disgust. "Just get out there, make nice and send him on his way, Sasha. He won't talk to anyone but you."

Sasha's eyes tended to glow an ugly yellow when she was mad, but she took a calming breath and Isis could tell she was getting it under control.

"Be charming Sasha, you can do it."

Sasha didn't even look behind her as she clacked back down the hallway.   
Isis pulled out her cell phone and began to gather the family's considerable resources to claim the crown as their own.

"Doctor Jackson? I'm Sasha Arises."

Daniel looked up at a woman much younger than he expected; but then since all the Arises had the same names, it was easy to have your mind play tricks on you. He and Teal'c moved away from the gawky teenager who'd been assigned to show them a particularly bloody letter from a would-be assassin by the name of Bishop Mare. A personal family favorite it seemed. He could see the resemblance from Bally to Sasha.

"It's a pleasure. Please call me Daniel. This is my business associate and friend, Teal'c."

Sasha's head came up with evident suspicion and looked intently at Teal'c.

"Teal'c? What an unusual name."

Daniel looked up to make sure that Teal'c's skullcap wasn't up higher on his head than usual. While it wasn't the biggest deal to have what looked like a gnarly tattoo or head jewelry on in more rural settings, walking into one of the biggest conglomerations of archaeologists with a cartouche of an Egyptian god on your head just would not do.

Teal'c bowed slightly with his normal enigmatic smile. "It was my choice."

"Just so." Sasha's eyes closed slightly as she turned back to Daniel.  
"Doctor Jackson, I understand you're looking for me. This wouldn't have anything to do with the missing hieroglyph, aliens converging on Giza and a rather sad abandoned Atef crown, would it?"

Daniel was amazed at the woman's control. She was obviously pissed off  
about something, perhaps even the idea that his name and hers would be in the same sentence; but she was trying to be charming despite it. Women.

"Actually, I am on the payroll for the US government. They sent me out   
because I'm the only one who can figure out what it means when someone says they'll hand something over when "Ra swallows Nut.""

Sasha began to find herself laughing. It was unusual for people to kid with her. But this man was only one step from insane where archaeological society was concerned. Perhaps it was easier to be nuts.

"When Ra swallows Nut…I suppose that is apt. Somehow the Egyptian Government seems to think that they can issue permits and expect us to pay for protection and time on their soil and then just ignore the dates that they mandated. Dr. Jackson you may tell your superiors that the Atef crown is legally ours, we still had crews on site, and nothing had been abandoned. The fact that I personally left the site is hardly an indication that the dig was over."

"I don't think that the Egyptian government is going to back this man's claims, Miss Arises."

"Sasha, please."

"Sasha, thank you. I think that once it is made clear and public about the dates and times of your dig, they'll cave. They can't be seen as not supporting the archaeologists that come to them. There's no way that they can support digs from their own people. They need corporations and funding. If the Arises family walks away from them, there will be a boycott."

"I suppose that you're right. I also suppose that this wasn't your only reason for being here today, Dr. Jackson."

"Daniel, please."

"Daniel, then. I'm guessing you're also here to hear about the aliens? Sorry to disappoint you, but there are no aliens."


End file.
